(ATN) Voicemail Announcement Systems for Coordination at Conferences, Elsewhere

(ATN) Voicemail Announcement Systems for Coordination at Conferences, Elsewhere

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Issue #189, December 17, 1993
John S. James

This article stems from our recent experience covering a large AIDS conference in Washington, D.C. About a thousand people attended, including about 20 AIDS treatment activists from several cities. In such situations, activists sometimes meet before the conference to share information about what is "hot," what is new and most important; there are many simultaneous meetings, so people must choose, and the official program seldom tells the real story. But often the activists do not get coordinated until the conference is mostly over, meaning that their time at the meeting is not used as well as it could be. Not only do they miss important official sessions, but they lose opportunities for special- focus dinner meetings and other informal gatherings, where valuable contacts could be made. [This is a big problem for everyone at international AIDS conferences, such as the upcoming August 7-12 1994 meeting in Yokohama, Japan. These world AIDS gatherings, each with about ten thousand participants and thousands of meetings and other presentations packed into five or six days, have traditionally compounded the information overload problem by refusing to release much information in advance -- a bit of "corporate culture" left over from the early days of the epidemic, and difficult or impossible to change because a different group in a different country handles the arrangements each year. We believe that the ultimate solution is to computerize AIDS teamwork and communication when possible, making the same information available throughout the world at all times. For example, conference abstracts and other presentations should be publicly available by computer as soon as they are submitted, even before they are refereed. People will still go to the meetings.]

One partial solution now is for activists (or other groups with a shared interest) to rent a local voicemail system, during a conference and for a few days before and after it, to use as a telephone announcements line. Perhaps five, ten, or twenty people would be given a code to add messages to the outgoing announcement; these new messages would instantly be available to all callers. Everyone interested would be given a phone number to call to hear the current announcements, starting with the most recent. They would not need any instructions for using the system; just call and listen for what's new, then hang up when you get to the older messages which you already heard in a previous call. Because the new messages play first, it's easy to call several times a day to keep in touch with the latest information.

The same kind of system could also be used permanently in a city, as an improvement over the "events tapes" which many organizations have used for years. The problem with most of the events tapes is that the whole tape has to be re-recorded in order to make any addition or change to the message. As a result, the messages are not current, but are likely to be updated only once a week or so, or at most once a day. With a voicemail announcement system, anyone authorized to add an announcement only needs to call it in.

Specifications: What an Announcement System Should Do?

We are now investigating voicemail systems to see which ones have the features needed for this special use, for example:

* Messages must be added to the outgoing announcement which anyone can hear -- not to a voice mailbox which only those with a special code can listen to.

* The announcement must play the most recent additions first -- so that callers don't have to wait through old news they have already heard before learning if there is anything new.

* The average caller should not need any special instructions, and not need to use a voice menu. Just call and listen -- from any phone, even a rotary-dial phone which cannot transmit tones to control the equipment.

* A code, such as a four-digit number, will allow only authorized callers to add messages to the outgoing announcements; each new announcement must be available immediately to all subsequent callers. Persons without the code who learn about something interesting should be able to leave a message in a voice mailbox (after the outgoing announcement finishes); those with the code should be able to hear this message, and to transfer it into the outgoing announcement if they choose to do so.

* An additional code could be used to keep the entire system private, if desired. Callers would have to enter this code to hear the outgoing announcements. (This secrecy could be discreet, by having the system play a standard announcement asking callers to leave their message, which would be recorded as with standard voicemail; only callers who entered the code during or after this standard outgoing message would hear the announcements. This avoids making people angry by having the system hang up on them because they don't have the code.)

* Multiple phone lines should be available, so that at least two callers can dial the same number and use the system simultaneously. * Callers should be able to skip forward and backwards within a message, and also to the next/previous message.

* The system administrator should be able to find out how many people have called, and when. Ideally, the cumulative number of calls so far should be available at any time by telephone, through use of a special code. [This master code should also allow the administrator to assign or change the codes which allow others to add outgoing announcements -- and to call in and learn which code was used to add each announcement. This way, several organizations can share the responsibility of updating the information; and if a code gets out and is abused (for example, to add false announcements), it can be revoked selectively.]

Systems with all these features do exist, or soon will. Renting a service can start at about $25 per month, regardless of the number of incoming calls; so operating a voicemeil announcement line is within the financial reach of most organizations.

Request for Information

If you can recommend a voicemail system for such use -- or know how we might find one in Yokohama -- call AIDS TREATMENT NEWS at 800/TREAT-1-2, or 415/255-0588. We hope to provide such a system at the Yokohama conference. We are also considering setting up a permanent system, open to everyone, in San Francisco.

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